Otherworld: Guest Speaker Emma Jane

 

Hi, thanks for joining me on my blog tour. My name's Emma Jane and I'm one of the authors of Otherworld.

Archetypal English toff William "Liam" Barnes is in big trouble. He's borrowed money from Irish gangster Davey McGrath with one simple proviso: get the prism from Matthew Luttrell - seducing him if he has to - and bring it back to him. But the prism isn't with Matthew, and Liam makes a decision he can't undo, meaning he's now twenty thousand pounds in debt to a vicious gangster and has no idea where to find the prism.

That is, until he meets stoic Irishman Jim Henvey, the real owner of the prism, who has a cruel demi-goddess of a mother on the warpath for him. Liam and Jim quickly find themselves tied up in each other's messes, and with more than just the mortal world out to get them, is there any way they can find their way out of a battle between dimensions together and still have time to figure out their feelings for each other? Or will they sink deeper into trouble?

Today, I'm going to talk about Cliona AKA Mammy. Cliona is Jim's scary mother. She's loosely 

based on the Goddesses Fand (sea goddess) and Cliodna (queen of the banshees) from Irish mythology. So she's not exactly human. She's charged with collecting the souls of people who have died and bringing them to the otherworld so they can pass over, but she's not a nice person. She used to take Jim to the otherworld when he was a child and leave him there, even though he was terrified, to build up his strength. She uses Jim for her own purposes, he's nothing but a means to an end for her. She's cold and power obsessed.

During the course of the novel, Cliona can only leave the otherworld to collect a soul, and as the source of her power - the prism - has been taken from her, she's trapped in Ireland and unable to come after Jim herself. She sends Mr. McGrath and his heavies instead and, through Liam, they get to Jim.

I've always been interested in mythology and the paranormal. I go on ghost hunts myself and have friends (and family members) who are mediums, so I'm quite inspired by that sort of thing. There will often be paranormal elements in my novels.

~

Mr. Barnes raised his eyebrows. "Do go on, James. Tell me why you know better than I do."

"It's not important," James said. "A long story. A long time ago."

"James, you are in my house," Liam's father said wearily. "Indulge me."

James stared at him. Why had he even brought it up? That was the thing about bottling up -- it was meant to stay bottled. Nobody knew, not Marcas, not Stella, certainly not Liam. The twins, well, he had his suspicions.

"My mother, Cliona," he began slowly, "she wasn't well. In the head. She was... cruel without realizing it. She hurt me in a lot of ways. But I couldn't hate her. She wasn't to blame, it was the thing in her head, the voice on her shoulder, the--" He drew in a deep breath, surprised to find his eyes had pricked with tears. He turned away from Mr. Barnes and stared intently at an empty corner of the room. "If you want to speak to your son again, I can help you. But honestly, in my experience -- it only makes things worse."

Otherworld is published by Torquere Press. (link)

You can follow Emma Jane on Twitter: @emizzy. Follow her blog: http://emmy-j.blogspot.co.uk or visit her website: ejtett.weebly.com

Also by Emma Jane:

The Queen's Guard - a short story published in Torquere's Men in Uniform anthology

Compulsion - a short story published in Dreamspinner's Hot off the Press anthology

Shuttered - a novel published by Dreamspinner Press, due for release December 2014

Also by Liz Powell:

Hunted - a novel published by Manifold Press